Adyashanti

Here is a reminder from Robert Adams. It is necessary and terribly efficient to look into these matters for ourselves. This is why I like to share here the parts of a spiritual teaching that sounds like ‘something to do’, something to experiment and verify for ourselves:

“You’ve got to realize you are greater than you think, and you’ve got the same power within you as everybody else does. It may appear to be asleep, but as you work on yourself, work on yourself, work on yourself, you will awaken it, and one day it will become stronger than you are and take you over completely and you’ll be free. But you’ve got to keep on working on yourself, and stop putting yourself down. That’s the worst thing you can do is to put yourself down. That’s blasphemy because you’re putting God down. Think of yourself as a higher person, love yourself, worship yourself, bow to yourself. You are greater than you think.”

~~~

Further exploring on the subject:

“Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can fulfil them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real, the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well.”
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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“Hold on to the tail of the tiger, don’t let it go, because you will see if you hold on, you will enter into quite, totally a different dimension. But if you let go, you know it is like coming back to living in the beastly life of struggle and conflict and battle with each other.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

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“I think the best way to live in this world, the most important thing, is to explore and to recognise who we essentially are. And having recognised who we essentially are, or as we are engaged in this exploration, to think and feel in a way that is consistent with our understanding of ourself. And to act in a way that is consistent with those thoughts and feelings. In other words, our knowledge of ourself, our understanding of ourself, is the most important aspect of life, because everything we do, everything we think, all the relationships we engage in, we think and feel and act and relate on behalf of ourself. And therefore, everything depends on our understanding of ourself.”
~ Rupert Spira

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“O soul, seek the Beloved, O friend, seek the Friend,
O watchman, be wakeful: it behoves not a watchman to sleep.”
~ Rumi

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“You always have two choices. One choice is the familiar one: to sacrifice this mysterious awakeness for something else. The second choice is not to sacrifice this that’s awake and present, whatever you happen to be. You can choose not to sacrifice this for the next promise of a better moment, a better event, or a better experience. This is your choice — to be true to what’s true or not. And this is the Fire of Truth. This that is awake now, as you, in you, reveals the utter irrelevance of every other argument, whatever that may be. This that is awake to itself renders everything that is not true irrelevant. This silence burns the grasping for anything else and frees the life that you are, to live itself without negotiation. Feel the immediate visceral invitation of this that is awake, to put down everything else. The invitation asks you to cease bargaining with life, with the moment, yourself, your teacher, your friend, your mate. Just stop. This fire is unseen and unknown, and yet it burns everything other than itself.”
~ Adyashanti

“You run into this amazingly beautiful paradox
that there is no ‘I’ at all and ‘I’ is everywhere,
and both of those are true simultaneously.
It’s about as much fun as you could possibly have.
There isn’t an ‘I’, and
the only thing that exists is one big ‘I’
shining out of everything.”

JERRY KATZ has been interested in human consciousness since childhood, and has investigated many spiritual teachings. He is also a landscape photographer. For him, “photography is a journey toward honesty, beauty and self-discovery.” Jerry is the creator of the website ‘Nonduality: The Varieties of Expression’. He also founded ‘Nonduality Salon’, a forum that recognizes and welcomes both the ‘impossible’ and the ‘worthwhile’ expressions of nonduality. Since 1998, Jerry has published a free daily email letter, ‘The Nondual Highlights’. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Like this:

This was our last retreat there. In the old mansion that we so dearly loved. Amongst the rolling hills of Wales. Here we have listened and felt. Here we have known what needs to be known. We have felt our heart sing and thrive beyond measure.

Here we sang together for the last time. A small improvised choir. A last song that is like a hymn for future days. Its lovely tune I cannot convey to you. But the words. Oh the words… Only listen and feel the heart of it. It goes:

“Be still and know that I am God
And there is none besides me”

The first injonction is ‘be still’. It’s a call. There is a wild world out there. Don’t run after every seducing thought. Don’t follow every glitter of experience. Be disinterested for once. Turn your head away. Say: I don’t want you! Try it.

Don’t let the world eat you. If anything, swallow it yourself! But do it softly. Let it go and disappear of its own accord. Be gentle. We don’t want to upset it. It needs to tell you more. Wait a little longer. You will be surprised.

Put yourself together. Find the place of togetherness in you. Stay there. See how good it feels. Be reunited with your own self. Make it happy. Make yours its sweet presence. Hear its heartfelt cry resonating. You’re here. At last! […]

‘The Aloneness of being’ is a phrase borrowed from Krishnamurti. Here are a few quotes to celebrate Aloneness…

“Aloneness is the purgation of all motives,
of all pursuits of desire,
of all ends.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

“We walked up the steep bank of the river and took a path that skirted the green wheat-fields. This path was a very ancient way; many thousands had trodden it, and it was rich in tradition and silence. It wandered among fields and mangoes, tamarinds and deserted shrines. There were large patches of garden, sweet peas deliciously scenting the air. The birds were settling down for the night, and a large pond was beginning to reflect the stars. Nature was not communicative that evening. The trees were aloof; they had withdrawn into their silence and darkness. A few chattering villagers passed by on their bicycles, and once again there was deep silence and that peace which comes when all things are alone.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

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“One must be willing to stand alone — in the unknown, with no reference to the known or the past or any of one’s conditioning. One must stand where no one has stood before in complete nakedness, innocence, and humility. One must stand in that dark light, in that groundless embrace, unwavering and true to the reality beyond all self — not just for a moment, but forever without end. For then that which is sacred, undivided, and whole is born within consciousness and begins to express itself.”
~ Adyashanti

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“Aloneness is indivisible and loneliness is separation. That which is alone is pliable and so enduring. Only the alone can commune with that which is causeless, the immeasurable. To the alone, life is eternal; to the alone there is no death. The alone can never cease to be.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

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“Walking, surrounded by these violet, bare, rocky mountains, suddenly there was solitude. Complete solitude. Everywhere, there was solitude; it had great, unfathomable richness; it had that beauty which is beyond thought and feeling. It was not still; it was living, moving, filling every nook and corner. The high rocky mountain top was aglow with the setting sun and that very light and colour filled the heavens with solitude.”
~ J. Krishnamurti

– J. Krishnamurti’s excerpts are from ‘Krishnamurti’s Notebook’ and ‘Commentaries on Living: First Series’.